1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to devices used in the entertainment industry and, more specifically, to devices that can control beams of light from a source.
2. Description of Prior Art
At the present, conventional lighting systems require the lighting designer to work with lighting fixtures that emit a directional beam of light. The limitations of this type of design lie in the need to meet all aspects of design, such as visibility, motivation, revelation of form, selective visibility, and movement, with a finite number of lighting fixtures. The lighting fixtures are used in two basic fashions. Certain lighting fixtures are used to give a wash or general stage illumination. The remainder of the available lighting fixtures can then be used for highlighting special moments in the production known as specials.
The mounting positions of the lighting fixtures are generally fixed structures or trusses about the stage. The number of lighting fixtures that can be usefully mounted to any structure is limited to the amount of positioning that particular lighting fixture needs to produce the desired effect upon the stage. The reason for this is that the horizontal axis utilizes more space in positioning than does the vertical axis.
There have been several attempts to incorporate ways to manipulate the entire lighting fixture. One such attempt in known by the trade name VARILITE U.S. Pat. No. 4,392,857. This system does reduce the amount of fixtures necessary to light a production by allowing the designer to use the same lighting fixtures to perform in both wash designs as well as specials. The draw back of this system is the need to maneuver the entire fixture requires the use of powerful enough motors to move as well as smoothly stop the fixture at its desired location. Therefore, inertia of the lighting fixture places tremendous strain on the lighting fixture motors.
Some of these inertia problems have been reduced by devices that utilize a mirror to steer the light beam, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,697,227. In this lighting fixture, the light beam is deflected through a ninety-degree angle by a mirror mounted at a 45 degree angle to the light beam. A motor rotates the mirror around the optical axis, allowing the beam to be deflected to any azimuth angle in a plane perpendicular to the optical axis. Deflectation in the elevation axis is accomplished by rotating the entire lighting fixture on an axis perpenendicular to the optical axis. Therefore, while the steering about one axis is quick and responsive, the steering on the other axis is restricted to the same inertia limitations as before.
One underling flaw in the design of these and all other automated lighting fixtures that not only adds to the cost of the units but also to the complexity of the units inner workings is the incorporation of its own lighting source in the lighting fixture itself.
Another flaw is the necessity of a specialized control unit for the specialized lighting fixtures. By developing a unit that could be operated by any lighting control board already on the market or in any installation, the time and ability to learn to manipulate the system is greatly reduced.
This invention eliminates both of the above flaws by uitlizing any existing lighting fixture on the market and the existing control console.